Pulling A Quisp On Brayden Schenn

If Jewels From The Crown blogger Quisp gets to pat himself on the back with all three of his hands every time he takes a mystery, makes an educated guess and ends up being right, why can’t I? No reason. Well, humility, but that’s not the point. The point is that Quisp wrote an article today titled “Now we know what Lombardi was talking about” and even though I didn’t know I knew, I did know what Lombardi was talking about. Allow me to explain.

When I popped onto the site this afternoon and checked the day’s stats, I noticed that an old article, Brayden Schenn Cap Confusion, was getting hits again. Odd, what the hell would be people be looking at that for, a year and 4 months after I wrote the damn thing? I quickly found out that today’s big NHL news was that Schenn, the odds-on favorite to win the Calder Trophy this year, was assigned to the AHL by the Flyers. Shocking, I know. Or not.

Turns out this move is strictly a legal form of cap circumvention, it’s Philly’s way of avoiding carrying a giant cap hit for their young 3rd line center. This solves a mystery that was put forth by Lombardi’s comments on Schenn’s contract and cap hit. Essentially Lombardi said that Schenn adjusted his contract so his high cap hit wouldn’t keep him from making the team. Everyone wondered what the hell that meant, hence my article from June of 2010 that got the seemingly random hits today. We learn now that Schenn is only going to the minors for what will probably be one game, because his bonuses that make his cap hit so high assert that he must play in all 82 games and play 25 minutes per game to achieve them. Keep him out of the first game, no high cap hit due to bonuses. Voila.

Further voila (or, pre-voila), what did I specify those bonuses likely were in my now legendary article? Here are the exact quotes:

Hypothetical and maybe not even plausible example: Schenn makes an extra million if he averages over 20 minutes a game by season’s end.

Or: Schenn makes an extra million if he plays in all 82 games.

Two swings, two home runs. Well, one home run and one in field home run. Maybe I should read the CBA and start making charts too.

What does this mean? Well, either that I’m incredibly awesome, or that I just have an incredibly inflated ego. You know what? Scratch the ‘or’.

(editor’s note: the preceding article was brought to you purely out of a childish desire to mock Quisp, Surly Jacob’s fourth favorite blogger. Since you are now wondering who are his top three favorite bloggers, the list is as follows: 1. Surly Jacob. 2. Jacob ______ – The Clark Kent to Surly Jacob’s Superman. 3. Bobby Scribe. 4. Quisp)

Because Surly’s damn disease is contagious and I have been up since 4am and in trial all day today…I fixed it. I did lol when I saw it though. Regarding the blasphemous rumors, it is coming in a different form, one more cryptic, teasing and fun. Stay tuned.

Like the cleanup. I understand the title font, a good traditional sports sheet look. I typically have personal issues with certain changes in my surrounding (e.g. jerseys) but this looks good. Nice job and congrats on your numbers…

Very smart on the part of Schenn. In effect his big money contract year will arrive a year earlier (commiserate salary inflation, etc.).

There was a time I would have given it to them…now, it will cost them a lifetime suite (so we can invite our most diehard readers), a massage once a week from an ice girl of my choice (this is just for me, Surly doesn’t care for massages), 50 cent beers during the first two periods (the third period will be irrelevant by then) and interviews with Dean Lombardi whenever Surly & I want.